


The Familiar Strange

by theleaveswant



Series: The Strange Familiar [1]
Category: Captain America (2011), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Academia, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anthropology, Awkward Conversations, Banter, Bisexual Character, Canada, Exposition, First Meetings, Flirting, Gen, Graduate School, Neurodiversity, Travel, University, chatty mofos, jokes that only I will get
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-25
Updated: 2012-04-25
Packaged: 2017-11-04 04:32:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/389785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theleaveswant/pseuds/theleaveswant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Baby, I <i>am</i> the anthropology department.” He grins and offers Steve his hand; his grip is warm and solid. “Associate Professor Tony Stark, at your service.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Familiar Strange

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to everyone (all one of me) who, while looking through the reference list in a new book, reads "Bruce Braun" and pictures Bruce Banner.
> 
> Resemblance to any post-secondary institutions real or fictional is entirely deliberate, but generally well-meant. As for the AU-ified versions of the characters, they're mostly composites of people I know or know of from my own department and elsewhere, sometimes drawing on the MCU cast's other roles and offscreen personas for extra detail, but they'll veer off more (I hope) as the series continues.
> 
> This "pilot episode" does a fair bit of info-dumping to sketch out the setting and roles withing this AU. It also uses some discipline-specific jargon and makes jokes that probably aren't funny to anyone but me. You probably don't _need_ to read it in order to understand the later parts of this series (the parts where stuff'll actually happen), but I needed to write it before I could move on those other parts.

“Oh, come on!” Steve throws up his hands in exasperation when the elevator he's been waiting on for, no joke, four and a half minutes, finally stops just sitting on the fifth floor only to climb again, rather than descending to the ground floor rotunda where he's standing. Scowling, he punches the button again, dropping the volume of his irritated grumblings and blushing when a bearded man with a motorcycle helmet buckled around the strap of his leather satchel passes behind him, heading for the stairs.

The man glances over his shoulder at him and stops with his hand on the door. He's maybe fifteen years older than Steve, give or take, with dark hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. “What floor?” he asks.

“I'm sorry?”

“That elevator's a piece of crap. I've tried to fix it a few times but the maintenance staff always tattle to my department chair before I can make any significant progress. You seem like a more-than-usually fit specimen of humanity, not making use of any visible assistive devices or carrying any large blocks of granite, so presuming that you're not headed up to Math on the eighth floor or anything like that—and, if you are, my condolences—you're better off just taking the stairs. What floor?”

Steve blinks as he digests this little monologue, eventually realizing that the man is still staring at him, expecting an answer. “Oh, um. Fourth floor. Social Anthropology.”

“Aha!” the man says, his eyebrows rising like this is _very_ interesting news then, just as quickly, drawing together into a frown. “You're not a process server, are you?”

“Um, no.” Steve laughs awkwardly. “I'm a job applicant.”

The man keeps frowning.

“I'm here about the assistant professorship? There was an external posting; they invited me up for an interview.” He can feel his face growing hot.

“No, I know about the opening—that's not today, is it?”

Steve sighs with relief. “Well, the interview isn't until tomorrow, but I wanted to come to campus early and get the lay of the land, so to speak, so that nothing like that—” he gestures at the elevator—“happens when I’m here for the actual appointment.”

“I see,” the man says. He pushes open the stairwell door and indicates for Steve to follow. “And how do you like the lay,” he pauses to glance over his shoulder, “so far?”

Steve blinks, fighting an urge to blush. This would hardly be the first time a man has hit on him, but he opts, given the circumstances, to play things professional and ignore the rather obvious innuendo. “It's alright. The campus is a lot more built-up than I'm used to. Flashier, more crowded.”

“Where are you now?”

“Brooklyn College. I just finished my PhD.”

“Oh yeah, who's your committee?”

Steve frowns, wondering why this guy would know about his interview but not the contents of his application. “Peggy Carter and Chester Phillips. And, well, I was working with Abraham Erskine but of course he passed away last year.”

The stranger hums and looks at him again—up, this time, because Steve has caught up and is holding back in order to keep pace with him—and now Steve does blush because there's something knowing in that look, a glint in his eye above the tinted lens of his glasses, and Steve is suddenly mortified. The rumours can't have travelled this far so quickly, can they? “What did you say your name was?” the man asks.

“Steven Rogers.”

“From Brooklyn College.”

“Yes and, I'm sorry, but who're you?” Steve grimaces apologetically. “I'm assuming that you're with the anthropology department . . .”

“Baby, I _am_ the anthropology department.” He grins and offers Steve his hand; his grip is warm and solid. “Associate Professor Tony Stark, at your service.”

“Tony _Stark_?” Steve says. “I'm sorry, I should have recognized you. It's just, you're a lot friendlier than I expected.”

Tony stops preening. “Wow. The disciplinary grapevine has not been kind to me this year.”

“Oh no, I didn't mean it like that! Just, you're kind of a rock star, you know? I mean, you've been on the Colbert Report. I didn't expect you to be so . . . approachable.”

Apparently satisfied with this buttressing of his pride, Tony resumes climbing. He stops on the fourth floor landing, pulls open the door, and ushers Steve out into a carpeted hallway, much quieter and less brightly lit than the foyer where they'd met. “Welcome to the rabbit warren. Come on, main entrance is this way. As a rule, I tend to sneak in the back—” he tips his head towards an unmarked door close to the stairwell—“but for you I can make an exception.”

“Thanks,” Steve says. “You know it really is an honour to meet you. I'll admit I'm not as familiar with your work as I'd like to be, but I know you have a lot of very dedicated fans. And I knew your father—took a summer class with him in undergrad, back when I wanted to be an archaeologist. What a privilege that was—I mean, talk about a living legend, the techniques he introduced . . .” Steve notices Tony stiffening and knows he's said something catastrophically wrong, but before he has the chance to apologize Tony smiles, somewhat tensely, and accelerates away from Steve towards the red-haired woman emerging from a door at the end of the corridor.

“Tash!” Tony says.

“Dr. Romanova,” the woman corrects. “I have a lecture.”

“And I won't try to keep you long, I promise. I just wanted to introduce Dr. Steven Rogers.”

“It's actually not 'Doctor', yet,” Steve mutters to Tony when he catches up. “I still have to defend.”

“So, what,” Tony mutters back, “you're just 'Mister Rogers'? Please tell me that explains the cardigan.”

Steve holds out his hand to Dr. Romanova. “Doctor.”

She accepts it with a firm grip, her wary pout warming into a polite smile when she turns her attention to Steve. “Natasha, please. 'Dr. Romanova' is only for undergraduates, bureaucrats, and him.”

“Right.” Steve grins.

“Steven's got an interview for that open position tomorrow.” Tony waggles his eyebrows at Natasha, who rolls her eyes. “So I've volunteered to give him the nickel tour.”

“Of course you did.” Natasha looks at her phone and starts walking backwards down the hall the way they came in. “It was nice to meet you, Steven. I really do have to run, but I'll see you again tomorrow. In the meantime, try not to take anything Stark says too seriously. He's a smart-mouthed brat with a massive—”

“Cock,” Tony interjects.

“—ego.” Natasha turns her back on Tony and speeds up. She calls back over her shoulder as she reaches the corner, “and he's not half as clever as he thinks he is!”

“Poppycock,” Tony says, presenting this as clarification for his previous statement. “I am exactly as clever as I think I am, and Natasha's just sore because yesterday her favourite MA1 asked me to supervise her. She's usually much friendlier than that.” He resumes walking towards the department door. “I mean yes, she and I butt heads occasionally, but that's to be expected given our areas of overlap—sharing students, presenting at the same conferences, obligatory mutual citation—and our respective approaches are very different. But we actually do get along quite well most of the time. Plus, meeting new people, as a woman, even in this field, studying what she does, looking how she does, it's not surprising for her to start off rather aloof—high defensive walls, moat of polar bears, you understand. At least that's what Pepper says.”

“I see,” Steve says, nodding in a way that he hopes comes off as agreeable rather than patronizing or alarmed.

“Here we are,” Tony says, opening the door with a code punched into the lock and leading Steve down a much shorter, narrower hallway. He takes a right turn at the T into an open office area, broken up by desks and chest-high partition walls. “Main office here. Grad secretary's desk on your left, undergrad over there in the corner. Chair's office is behind that door there—Dr. Nicholas Fury, legend in decolonial studies, still doing groundbreaking work in critical race theory. Did you know he was an original member of the Black Panther party?”

Steve opens his mouth to tell Tony that yes, he did know that, but Tony has already backtracked into a smaller room branching off the main office.

“Ah, here's Happy.” Tony claps a hand on the back of a man who looks up from his task, sorting the output of a noisy copy machine, and smiles. “Steve, this is Harold Hogan, our grad program secretary; Happy, this is Steven Rogers, he has a job interview here tomorrow.”

“Nice to meet you, Steven,” Happy says, then turns his attention to Tony. “You know you still owe me book lists for your summer course offerings. If you want the bookstore to carry something, you need to to let me know _before_ the order deadline at the end of next week.”

“Yeah yeah, I'll get on that as soon as I'm done with this tour.”

“Because I can re-use your syllabi from last year, but if you’re gonna change anything you need to—”

Tony interrupts him with a hug. “I hear you. I will do it this afternoon.”

Happy grins wryly as he pulls away from Tony. “I'll send you another email, just in case.”

“Moving right along,” Tony says with a conspiratorial eyeroll, inviting Steve to condone his impatience with this philistine pestery. He begins to rotate in place, pointing out objects of interest as he turns: “copy machine, course reading master files, mail cubbies for faculty and graduate students, sink, coffee maker, fridge—remember to discard leftovers before they achieve sentience, recycling and compost bins.” He sweeps out of the copy room, trailing Steve in his wake.

“Here's our grad program director, Phil Coulson,” Steve points into the first office they pass as they embark down a narrow corridor lined with doors and cluttered bulletin boards, which contains a balding man with a telephone at his ear who gestures to them to close the door. “He does work.”

“You mean, like, labour studies?” Steve says, frowning.

“No, I mean he does actual work. Somebody around here has to.”

“Oh.” Steve sighs with relief. “Because I was sure Coulson's area was med anth.”

Tony, apparently well-ensconced in some kind of tour guide 'zone', shows no sign of hearing him, but opens his arms enthusiastically in the direction of a scruffy man in a purple shirt, coming down the hallway towards them. “G'day, Bruce! Meet our aspiring colleague Steven Rogers; Steven, this is Dr. Green.”

The man grimaces and offers Steve his hand. “It's Banner, actually.”

“Oh, I know,” Steve says. “I'm very impressed with your work—wilderness as an emergent entity in the co-production of nature and culture, all that ecogovernmentality stuff, it's just wild—no pun intended!”

“Hey, thanks, man,” Bruce says, taking Steve's babbling dorkishness rather well in stride. “That means a lot. You're historical, right? North America prior to the Second World War, foundations of the Boasian tradition?”

“Prior to and concurrent with, yes.”

Bruce nods. “Very cool. Hey, you didn't have any trouble getting across the border to get here, did you?”

Steve frowns. “No, why?”

“Yeah . . . you might have some getting back, or in the future if you do get hired on here.” Bruce tucks his head into his shoulders and looks at Steve apologetically. “You know my reputation—history of direct action, arrests, some pretty violent engagements. I'm not exactly a welcome guest where a lot of capitalist governments are concerned—”

“You're a biopolitical monster,” Tony interjects, and Bruce sighs in agreement.

“Pretty much, and it can make travel difficult even for people associated with me. They run your name, find out we work together, you get red-flagged . . . the whole thing's a mess. I'm sorry.”

“Oh . . . Well, I'm sure it's not that bad, but thank you for the heads-up.” Steve shrugs sympathetically.

“You are such a killjoy sometimes,” Tony says, watching Bruce with narrowed eyes. “Anything you wanna talk about?”

Bruce shakes his head. “Not right now, I’ve got a committee meeting over in the geography department. I’ll see you downstairs later?” 

Tony nods. “Count on it.”

“Steven, enjoy the rest of your visit. I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

“So,” Tony says when Bruce’s gone, “you’re an ecogovernmentality fanboy, eh?”

Steve blushes. “Uh . . . maybe a little? I actually didn't know much about it until quite recently.”

“You mean you don’t have a Bruce Banner scrapbook stretching back years?”

“No.” He laughs. “Not yet.”

“‘Cause you seemed to know a lot about him, is all.”

Steve’s not sure whether Tony’s teasing him or if he might actually be jealous. “Well, yeah—I researched the department before I applied. Isn’t that what you do when you’re applying for a spot somewhere?”

“Hm.” Tony frowns. “What do you know about Natasha?”

Steve blinks. “Um . . . Marxist feminist political economy, I guess, although I’m not sure that’s what she'd call it, that also draws on affect theory and embodiment in looking at sex and work, both the commodification of sex and the gendering and sexualization of labour, especially in discourses of and around sex work and sex workers, both here in North America and in former Soviet republics, in Russia and Eastern Europe.”

Tony mouth-shrugs. “Good enough. How about this guy?” He ushers Steve closer to a door on the opposite side of the hall from the offices, and jerks his thumb through the porthole window at a tired-looking man leaning back in his chair at the head of a conference table ringed by people with books and laptops—a graduate seminar, Steve guesses. Steve watches Tony blow a kiss through the glass—which the professor catches in midair and mimes tucking into his jeans pocket, all without taking his eyes off the student who's talking. Only after Tony smirks and turns his attention back to Steve does a flicker of a smile cross the other man's face.

“That's Clint Barton, assistant professor,” Steve says. “Started out in Middle Eastern archaeology, particularly circus sites around the time of Roman occupation, then did a stint in uniform as a translator in Afghanistan in '03. When he came back he switched his focus, and now he does sociocultural work on military culture, including some really challenging articles on embedded anthropologists and the Human Terrain Systems project.” He looks at Tony, who's watching him with one raised eyebrow. “I told you, I researched the department.”

Tony purses his lips and crosses his arms in front of his chest. “But you didn't research me.”

Steve sighs and looks at the floor because yeah, he thought that was where this was going. He wants to defend himself, to say that he _did_ recognize Stark, and that he's embarrassed that it took him as long as it did, but he also really doesn't want to whine. “Yeah, um. . . Honestly? I was looking into you all alphabetically, and I ran out of time before the application deadline, before I got around to you. In fact I ran out before I got to Dr. Romanova, too, except I already knew a bit more about her because Peggy's a huge fan. She loved her coverage of the Slutwalk movement so much she even printed out one of her blog posts and stuck it up on her door.” He meets Tony's eyes with a crooked half-smile. “I was planning to take a look tonight, before the interview; I just didn't expect to run into you in the meantime. Anyway, it's not like you've read my file, either.”

Tony's mouth twists sideways as he glances away. “Yeah, I was going to do that tonight, too,” he mutters, then looks at Steve and smiles. “Fair enough; you're off the hook.”

Steve sighs, relieved to be able to stop wracking his brain for Stark's interest area keywords on the departmental website, or what he'd said when he appeared as a guest on the Colbert Report, the time Steve put it on for background noise while marking undergrad essays. Something about cyborgs, he remembers, and human-machine interactions. Posthumanism, prosthesis, and techno-affective relationships, that sounds about right, plus there was something about embodiment and the erotic . . . he'll sort it out before he comes back tomorrow. For now, he gestures farther down the hallway. “Shall we continue the tour?”

The next stop turns out to be the computer lab, a narrow strip of a room lined on both sides with long tables set up with monitors, and currently occupied by three people: two women sitting side by side in front of computers, and a man looking over their shoulders from his seat on the edge of the table behind them. 

“Folks, this is Steven Rogers from Brooklyn College,” Tony announces as he leads Steve into the room. “He's got a job interview here tomorrow.” He stops and grins at Steve, his head cocked towards the trio of stranger. “Go on, hot shot. Do your party trick.”

Steve snorts and considers the strangers, beginning with the man who has just stood up from the table and reached to clasp Steve's hand enthusiastically. Perhaps 'giant' would be a more apt description—he's taller than Steve, and very muscular, with a light blond beard and his hair in a ponytail. “Assistant professor Thor Odinson,” Steve says, “studied at the University of Aberdeen, as part of their Nordic anthropology research group. Your PhD research was on seasonal festivals, excess, and the ludic, and I understand you're expanding that now to look at events in other parts of the world.”

Thor smiles broadly. “That's correct,” he says in an English-accented baritone, and Steve is embarrassed to realize that, for all that it didn't really fit with how he wrote or looked, he'd been expecting Odinson, based on his name, to sound sort of like the Swedish Chef. “Very well done.”

Steve smiles back automatically, then turns his attention to the women, both of whom are now staring up at him from their chairs. “Um . . .” he says, frowning, because he doesn't recognize either of them from the website.

“Darcy Lewis,” says the nearer of the pair, offering him her hand and a vague smile. “Fourth-year Master's student.”

Steve smiles nervously. “I thought this was a standard two-year Master's program.”

“It is,” Darcy says, tucking her long dark hair behind her ear. “I'm dawdling.”

“Right.” Steve says, reclaiming his hand and extending it to the woman sitting farther away. “And you are?”

“Dr. Jane Foster, postdoc in Physics and Astronomy.”

“Thor's lady-friend,” Tony supplies, and Thor confirms this by placing a hand on Jane's shoulder and grinning again, while she smirks up at him fondly, “who spends as much time on campus here with us as she does in her own department.”

Jane shrugs. “My office is a sauna, and our computer room's usually plagued with undergrad engineering students daring one another to visit /b/.”

“I thought 4chan was blocked all over the university network.” Tony frowns.

“It is,” Jane says, “but they apparently all have to figure that out for themselves. Like a rite of passage.”

Tony nods, and Thor looks back at Steve. “Are you a hockey player, Steven?” he asks.

“Uh, no,” Steve says, “I've never played.”

“But you can skate?”

Steve frowns, perplexed by this line of questioning. “I guess? I mean I haven't done it much, the past few years.”

“Excellent,” Thor says. “Then you shall play for our team.” He pulls out a chair and sits down backwards on it next to Jane.

“Um . . .” Steve tilts his head in confusion.

“Don't worry about not knowing the rules,” Darcy says, eyes on her screen. “It's basically performance art anyway, and every game eventually devolves into a snowball fight.”

“That happened but one time,” Thor protests, but Darcy turns her chair around to face Steve so that she can gesture animatedly as she explains.

“They've got this unofficial faculty intramural league, right? Social sciences and humanities people against natural sciences and engineering, except that Thor's team is made up of him, four other expats from different departments, and _Coulson_ , which is the part that really breaks my brain, and nobody seems to care at all about position or anything.”

“Volstagg's usually the goalie,” Jane observes.

“Usually,” Darcy agrees. “But apart from that, who knows.”

Thor rolls his eyes and kisses the top of Jane's head.

“It's a lot more fun than the NHL,” Tony says. He points a finger at Thor. “Did you hear back about that grant application?”

Thor's face lights up again. “I did!”

“And?”

“Application successful; funding obtained. Jane and I will be travelling to Black Rock City.”

“Yes!” Tony fist-pumps. “I'm so jealous.”

Thor frowns. “I thought you were going anyway.”

“No, I am,” Tony says. “I'm jealous of the fact that you get to call it work.”

“But I will be working,” Thor says seriously, then smirks, “at least for the first several days.”

“What are you talking about?” Steve looks back and forth between them.

“Burning Man,” Thor answers. “Have you been?”

Tony smirks. “Are you a Burner, Steven?” he asks, mimicking Thor's voice.

“Um, no,” Steve frowns. “I don't—I mean, I'm not really into drugs or anything, so.”

“Oh, me neither,” Jane says, looking up from her computer. “Bad things happen. I'm just in it for the art, and the stuff Thor's going there to study, the culture and the principles of participation. I haven't been to the playa yet but I've done some other festivals, and you really don't have to be high to have a good time, as long as you're cool with the fact that other people will be.”

Thor nods and looks at his watch. “I've got an office hour starting in about five minutes. Should probably go clear off my desk.” He kisses Jane softly and bumps her forehead with his own before he stands up to leave. “It's been a pleasure to meet you, Steven, and I look forward to seeing you again.”

“Oh, 'Steve' is fine,” Steve says at last, and pretends not to hear Darcy's muttered “yes, he is” as he and Thor shake hands again. 

“Yeah.” Tony clears his throat after Thor leaves. “If you ladies don't mind, I think that's a good cue to keep this show-and-tell moving along, so in case I don't see you again: have a great day!” 

“Yeah, okay,” Darcy tells her computer, then looks up again as Tony moves toward the door. “Hang on. Has Dr. Fury seen the two of you together yet?”

“No,” Steve answers, “his door was closed when we came in.”

She nods. “Probably better to keep it that way, if you actually want the job. Him and Tony—well, you're not his favourite, let's put it that way,” she says to Tony,, who shrugs like he's neither offended nor surprised, then turns back to Steve. “He kinda thinks of Tony as a bad influence, not so much because of his research as because he doesn't need the university's funding, which means he doesn't need to play by the university's rules to get it. Right? Like, if you apply to do something and administration says no, you'll just buy a way around them; I mean, that's what he's afraid of, that you'll get the rest of the department in trouble somehow by doing that.”

Tony frowns but doesn't argue. “I guess so, yeah.”

“So it's probably better not to be seen getting too pally until after you've got the job. If you get the job, that is. I'm not sure how serious they are about actually considering you, only because, well, I'm not sure what the current policies are on diversity hiring practices but I think the 'white guy' quota is already more than met.”

“That's true,” Tony says, “this place is kind of a sausage-fest.”

“For an anthropology department? Oh yeah. So, I don't know if you should get your hopes up or anything.” Darcy shrugs. “But, it was good to meet you and you seem like a really nice guy, and if I wasn't on my period right now I would definitely be asking what you're up to while you're in town and if you wanted to get together again before you leave.”

“Ummm,” Jane says, frowning sidelong at Darcy while Steve's eyes go wide and he blushes bright red.

“What? He doesn't work here yet, even if he gets the job, and if he does he won't be my prof. I'm done my coursework and I've already got a committee.”

“And what about your PhD?”

“Meh. Too far off to worry about.” She smiles up at Steve, who swallows.

“I'm flattered,” he says, “but—”

“That's cool,” Darcy says, and she seems genuinely unbothered. “No excuses necessary. It was a hypothetical offer, anyway.”

“Right, well,” Tony says, “ _if_ that'll be all, I'm going to go take _Steve_ over there.”

He plucks at the sleeve of Steve's sweater and tugs, and Steve follows him out into the hallway. 

“So how long are you in town for?” Tony asks as he reaches into his satchel and pulls out a set of keys. “This is me.” He nods towards one of the doors ahead, then glances Steve as he unlocks the door. 

“I leave on Thursday,” Steve says. The day after the interview.

“And do you have a place to stay?” Tony glances up at Steve as he sets his bag down on top of his desk and unhooks the helmet, setting it aside on top of a stack of paper files. “Because I have a spare room you can use, you know, so you won't have to go bangin' for roof.” Tony licks his lip after he says this, a nonverbal footnote reading transparently, 'unless you want to.'

“Uh, no, that's okay,” Steve says, looking away and pretending to study the contents of Tony's bookshelves, wondering if people here were always so 'friendly' or if it was something about him, specifically, that drew their attention. “I'm actually staying at a hostel downtown.”

“Alright, then. Offer stands, if you change your mind.” He opens the bag and starts unloading things: a laptop, a handful of loose papers, a couple of protein bars, what looks like a yo-yo . . . “Was there anything else you wanted to see on campus? Libraries, sport facilities? Because if you don't mind waiting while I do this thing for Happy, I can take you wherever on my way to—” 

Steve and Tony both look up, startled, at a sharp knock on the open door, to see a slim woman in a suit, her hair a more natural-looking shade of red than Natasha's, standing in doorway with a Blackberry in her hand. “Sorry for the interruption,” she says. 

“Pepper.” Tony's eyes narrow in a way that looks nearly as wounded as it does wary. “How're the flaps?”

Steve's eyes bug out before he remembers—FLAPS, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies. 

The woman's lips compress briefly, but she forces a smile before she speaks again. “Fine. Can I borrow you for a minute?”

“Do you have an appointment?” Tony asks, then immediately gestures at Steve. “This is Steve Rogers, from Brooklyn, he's here for a job interview. Steve, Dr. Virginia Potts, formerly of the English department and now dean of the faculty with the silly name. Also, my ex-wife.”

“Oh,” Steve says cleverly as Dr. Potts sighs and reaches for his hand. 

“Lovely to meet you, Steve,” she says, then turns back to Tony, who's just produced and taken a large bite out of an apple from inside his apparently bottomless satchel. “No, I don't have an appointment, because you always manage to dodge my appointments. Tony, I've got the people from Science and Engineering breathing down the back of my neck. We need to sit down and figure this thing out.”

“Yeeeeah, I know,” Tony grumbles under his breath. He looks at Steve, half-apologetic, half-pleading.

Steve shrugs and holds up his hands. “I . . .” he says, then shrugs again, unsure whether he should offer to wait or to resume the tour tomorrow, or just run while he has the chance.

Tony nods. “Well, there's not much else to see up here, besides the grad students' clubhouse across the hall and the bathrooms around the corner. You've already met just about everyone except Maria, faculty-wise, and she's only in M-W-F. I expect you know your way around well enough for tomorrow.”

Steve smiles. “Thank you, very much, for showing me around today. You've been a great help.” He makes his way towards the office door, glancing back at Tony one more time before he leaves. “I'll definitely recognize you next time we meet, anyway.”

He steps out into the hallway and is surprised when Dr. Potts follows him, instructing Tony to hang on and pulling the door most of the way closed behind her. “I apologize for that,” she says, “but I had to take the opportunity to talk to him while he was actually in the office.”

“It's fine,” Steve says. “Tony was just introducing me to the department, and we were almost done anyway.” He frowns. “I don't want this to sound—he's a little bit . . .”

“Neurodiverse?” she asks.

Steve sighs. “Yeah.”

“Unquestionably. He's also a brilliant theorist, and his students love him. Dealing with him as an administrator . . .” She rolls her eyes and taps the toe of her elegant high-heeled shoe on the dull grey carpet. “It's worse than usual now,” she says, her eyes on the wall past Steve's shoulder. “He's suddenly decided that he wants to _stay_ with the Anthropology department, so he's going out of his way to show everyone that he's a team player, but of course that leaves the rest of us standing around holding the bag . . .” She shakes her head.

Steve's eyebrows draw down. “Dean Potts, I have no idea what you're talking about.”

Potts makes an exasperated noise, and looks up at him. “Who knows. Possibly nothing. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay, and good luck with your interview.”

She waves goodbye as she opens the door and steps back into Stark's office. Steve waits in the hall long enough to hear her launch right into him—“You pushed for the creation of a Science and Technology Studies department, remember? You can't just decide you don't feel like it now that we've finally secured the resources!”—before he follows the hallway to its end around the corner, alone, and emerges from the 'back entrance' of the department, back into the wider corridor from before, next to the stairwell. He bypasses the stairs to cross through another door into an open gallery, overlooking the rotunda where he met Tony waiting for the elevator an hour earlier, and looks down over the railing at people going about their business four floors below. 

He reaches into his pocket for his phone and begins to compose a text to Peggy, telling her how bizarre and daunting it feels to be here, and how uncannily like home.


End file.
